Welcoming Monty and Vicron

Just saying hello, really, and thanks for joining in.  Monty's blog is here; at the moment he has a lovely Egil, one of my favourite saga characters.  Go and have a look and you'll see what I mean.  I'll link in with Vicron at one point, if I can - blogger can be rather odd when it comes to finding people's blogs...

Hastings: Saxon Command Bases

Three bases for the good guys at Hastings, each representing one of the Godwinson brothers along with a few friends:

First up is a standard square base with three figures.

Men by Gripping Beast, transfers and banners by Little Big Men Studios, as always...

The second base has four figures, along with a larger banner.  The guy on the left has been eating all the pies!

The two banners in these groups have white stripes in between the coloured ones.  I think the white ones are meant to be cut out, but I left them the way they are.  My figures see quite a lot of travel and rough handling, so making too many tiny streamers would be tempting fate,

The grassy stuff is by Faller, intended for model railway layouts.

Finally, we have the man himself, with a Wessex Dragon standard and his personal banner.  I decided to make Harold's group really stand out by giving him two flags - nice and colourful that way.

The Harold figure is quite large, but he seems larger here than he is in fact, because the base is leaning slightly forward.  Anyway, the King should tower over everyone else.

I gave Harold a shield transfer from the Breton set, because he has a kite shield.

This one and the previous base are shaped slightly differently from my usual square or round ones.  Basically, I've based each of the larger groups on half of a large hexagon as a bit of an experiment.  I hope the top-down shot shows what I mean.

There is method in my madness, as I hope you can see from the above.  The half hexagon has a 12cm long side, which is exactly the same width as an infantry unit in column.  I wanted a base that would fit the rear of a unit, but which would still be visually identifiable as a command stand.

This is the same unit viewed from the front: Huscarls with Harold in personal attendance.

On the Painting Tray: March 2013

After the marathon of almost 200 Scutarii, the next lot lined up will seem almost a relaxation by comparison: command bases for Hastings.  There's a base of five figures for Harold Godwinson, then one of four and one of three for his brothers.  For the Normans (all mounted), there will be a base of five for William the Lucky Bastard, one of four for his peace-loving brother Odo, aka the Bishop with the enormous club, and two bases of three figures for the lesser commanders, one of which will be Bretons.  So that's twelve foot and 15 mounted, a reasonable number to paint in a couple of weeks (the next trial of the game is on March 19th), especially since the Saxons are almost finished already.  In fact, I might be able to put photos on the blog sometime this weekend - it has to be said that those Little Big Men banners are lovely.  I also need to rebase 120 Norman infantry figures for the same battle.  Anything I manage later in the month will be a bonus - commanders for Chalons will be next on the list...